


Slow is in My Blood

by sunriseseance



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:55:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21957739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunriseseance/pseuds/sunriseseance
Summary: Dave touches him, sometimes. In dances through root systems lit by a diffused moon, Dave puts a hand on his lower back, his arm, his shoulder. To help, he says. Your balance, he says, it isn’t good. I don’t want you to fall. These pits are endless, he says. You don’t like the dark. A touch to help. It helps.A meditation on Klaus and allowing himself to be loved. Dave doesn't die at the end.
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 12
Kudos: 77





	Slow is in My Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hermitreunited](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermitreunited/gifts).



Touch, yeah? A beautiful thing. Sacred to Klaus as the last remnant of a human world. Purely human. He can feel the blood in a touch: the warmth, the pulse, the presence itself. Nothing dead can touch. Reach out and touch. Let himself be touched. Touch. 

Dave touches him, sometimes. In dances through root systems lit by a diffused moon, Dave puts a hand on his lower back, his arm, his shoulder. To help, he says. Your balance, he says, it isn’t good. I don’t want you to fall. These pits are endless, he says. You don’t like the dark. A touch to help. It helps. 

Klaus has almost loved before. He stood on the brink of love often enough. Looked in green eyes, brown eyes, cloudy-grey eyes that don’t look back at him. He knows the draw of it. Magnetism, maybe, if he was iron and they were indefinite. There’s iron in his blood, you know, red like everyone elsevs. Maybe it's the cold, the room temperature skin, that puts up his fight for him. Maybe cold iron is less susceptible to magnetic pull, and that’s why he could dig his fingers into the dirt, bloody them red, and claw his way back to the streets instead of take up residence in someone’s heart. Maybe that’s why the heat of the Jungle takes his fight away. Or maybe it’s just the color blue.

Maybe it’s not one sided. Maybe he touches Dave on the back of his neck just to watch his skin react. Maybe he hopes the reaction comes from the touch itself, and not the chill Klaus carries with him. Maybe he lets the touch linger long enough for Dave to smack his hand away. Maybe he knows, somewhere, that smack is the wrong word. Dave doesn’t smack. He holds, and moves. He lacks a violence somewhere at his core. Maybe it’s the only way Klaus has something Dave lacks, and maybe it’s the only thing Klaus wouldn’t share if Dave asked. Not for the first time, Klaus looks at Dave’s profile, hears his sleeping breath escape his nose, and wonders why such a gentle man would come to a place like this. 

Dave doesn’t fight Klaus. Never makes Klaus feel unwelcome, or unwanted. Maybe Klaus should stop speaking in negatives. Maybe that, in and of itself, is a fight. Dave makes Klaus feel wanted. When he says the two of them can room together because, see, the hotel is all full. When he lets his eyes touch Klaus, really touch him, and linger there long enough for Klaus to feel the ghost of it (when he doesn’t ask about Klaus’s ghosts more than once. When he smiles and waits patiently). 

Goes without saying, Klaus isn’t used to this. Blood is red and love is red and it’s all visceral and overwhelming and he avoids it. Doesn’t he? Does he? Does he avoid Dave’s touch on his wrist or the cross of their arms or Dave’s spit on his shotglass or Dave’s hand on his cheek or Dave’s lips on his own? The answer is obvious in the escalation, maybe. 

There’s a mirror in the bathroom. It shows a Klaus that Klaus can’t recognize. Somethings off about him, maybe. Dave is on the bed (their bed), in the room (their room) and Klaus can’t breathe. He can picture the crossword puzzle he’s filling in (wrong, sometimes. The wrong words. He calls it art. The antecedent is confusing on purpose, Klaus thinks. Bleeding. They’re bleeding. Neutrally). 

Is this scary?

He could run. He takes a pill, blue, and lets it wash over him. He could open the briefcase and let Dave become a memory. He runs cold water, pools it in his hands, splashes it on his face. He could tell Dave what a bad idea this is. He could tell Dave the truth and let Dave decide for himself. The glass of the mirror chills his fingers when he touches it. Himself? His eyes. The first unfamiliar place. Dave has blue eyes. 

He could start a fight. Tell Dave what a stupid move it was to kiss him like that. In public, no less. He could show Dave all the broken glass underneath his skin. 

He looks sensational. Another confused antecedent. Jesus Christ. He wants this. Bears repeating; he wants this. The unfamiliarity is in the eyes because he can see them, finally. He can look at them and he can see them and he can see through them and look back at himself. The light is yellow. It flickers, but it doesn’t burst. The curtain isn’t red and the towels aren’t red and all of the blood in the room (their room) sits inside of the bodies they belong in. He wonders, for a moment, if he would give Dave his blood. Only a moment. He knows the answer. He knows all the answers. 

Klaus likes blue. He likes how gentle it is in the moonlight. How cooling against fevered air and fevered skin (fevers are blood, overwhelming). He likes how blue stands behind the stars in infinity and how, on a mountain or the right roof, he can reach out and touch it. Feel the velvet on his fingers. He likes how blue swirls in the ocean how it’s big and strong. Once, as a child, he tried to fight a wave. Impossible. Impossibly vast. Just let them carry you to shore, or out to sea, or anywhere else. Don’t follow the metaphor too far. Everything comes back to blue, though. Klaus loves blue. 

Something surrenders inside of him, and he realizes it’s a good thing. He leaves the bathroom. Dave looks up from his crossword puzzle and he has a pen in his mouth and he smiles around it and Klaus has never made a better decision than to stand where he is and let himself stand there. Dave stands up and walks to him. Walks to him. Walks to him. A mantra. Dave walks to him and Klaus stands there, and he lets him. This is a choice. Dave walks to him. Klaus breathes.

Dave touches him, and Klaus lets him and lets him and lets him and would let him for all eternity. He loves Dave’s blood and he wants to touch it forever, but never see it. He touches Dave. 

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, Roo!!


End file.
